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The Mario Kart series is rarely revolutionary, but it’s always extraordinary. With the possible exception of the Game Boy Advance entry, every Mario Kart game has gone on to become one of the most popular and well-made multiplayer experiences of their given system.

Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U is destined for that same status. Whether you’re new to the series or have played every entry before now, Nintendo’s latest racer is easy to pick up and just tricky enough to master.

At its simplest, Mario Kart 8 is exactly what fans know and expect. There are lots of colorful Mario series characters, tons of zany tracks to race on and crazy items to take advantage of. The classic character roster of Mario and friends is bolstered by new additions like the Koopalings and Baby Rosalina, who will race on 32 tracks — 16 brand new tracks and 16 remixed tracks from previous Mario Kart games. Those classic tracks aren’t just straight remakes, though. Each has been retooled to take advantage of Mario Kart 8‘s various features, including gliding, driving underwater and anti-gravity.

If you want to know what makes this game different from earlier games, anti-gravity is the easiest answer. Mario Kart 8‘s tracks will often have you driving up walls, driving sideways and even driving upside down. When you approach a gravity-defying section of the track, the wheels of your vehicle automatically fold inward and allow you to hover over the track, even if that track is on the ceiling. While in this anti-gravity state, bumping into other drivers actually becomes a strategy rather than a hindrance, as ramming a fellow racer will give you a quick boost of speed.

The basics of driving never really change, however. Even when you’re driving at a 90 degree angle, the camera tends to stay right behind you, properly oriented so you don’t experience any vertigo. At times you might not even notice what direction “up” is unless you take cues from your environment.

But while driving on walls is mostly aesthetic (though it’s a really cool aesthetic), there are two major changes to the formula this time around, and they may take getting used to.

The first is the way items work. As before, when you drive through an item box on the track, you get a random item that you can use in either an offensive or defensive capacity as you race. Also as before, you can “hold” many of these items — like green shells and bananas — behind you, both to defend yourself from rear attacks and to keep the item ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. In past games, however, holding an item this way emptied your item slot and allowed you to grab another item from an item box, essentially keeping two weapons in your chamber at all times. That’s no longer possible, and now items take up your singular inventory until you use them. No cheating.

The second change is in the game’s battle mode. Rather than dropping a bunch of players into a big, often multi-layered arena, Mario Kart 8‘s battles take place on regular tracks. You aren’t racing, and there are no laps, but the environment is completely different from what you might expect. There is also a bigger emphasis on hitting other players, now, rather than simply surviving until the end.

While fun, this new battle mode is honestly a disappointment. Previous battle modes were a great diversion from standard races that actually, you know, felt different than racing. By making you battle on full size tracks, a lot of the magic goes away.

The pain of losing a superior battle mode is lessened somewhat by a great array of online multiplayer options. It’s incredibly easy to jump into a game of Mario Kart 8 with up to 12 friends or strangers (yourself included), whether you want to race, battle or enter a tournament. You can also share highlight clips with people over the Miiverse or even YouTube, which is a surprisingly cool feature from the usually online-adverse Nintendo.

Mario Kart 8 is not a game that really makes the case for the Wii U hardware itself, though. The system’s signature controller is more or less just that — a controller. You can play the game on it without using the TV, or you can tap the screen to honk your horn, but that’s basically it.

It does take advantage of the Wii U’s power, though. Mario Kart 8 is an incredibly good looking game, with beautiful, colorful tracks that beg to be looked at. Every character is well animated and aspect of the vehicles themselves feels unique. Even if the act of racing itself doesn’t feel much different than the last Mario Kart game you played, the series has certainly never looked better.

Nintendo isn’t reinventing the wheel here, but they’re delivering a masterful execution of a concept they’ve been championing for years. It won’t earn any new fans, but if you’ve had Mario Kart fever before, you’re probably going to catch it again with Mario Kart 8.

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